Astronauts gear up for spacewalk No. 2

Published 7:00 pm, Friday, March 14, 2008

With Dextre the robot's power problem solved, astronauts geared up for the second spacewalk of their space station mission Saturday to put together almost the entire walking and working machine.

The robot's hands were attached to its 11-foot arms during the first spacewalk. This time, spacewalking astronauts were going to connect the arms to the shoulders. First, though, the giant robot was going to sit up on its transport bed, rising like Frankenstein as one astronaut put it.

Shuttle Endeavour astronaut Rick Linnehan was headed back outside for Dextre Assembly Part 2, along with Michael Foreman. They were so eager to get going that they climbed into their spacesuits almost an hour ahead of schedule.

The spacewalk _ expected to begin Saturday night and last into the wee hours of Sunday _ came close to being drastically altered or even delayed. For nearly two days, because of a cable design flaw, NASA could not get power to Dextre, lying in pieces on its transport bed.

It wasn't until the astronauts gripped Dextre with the international space station's mechanical arm Friday night that the robot got the power it needed to wake up and keep its joints and electronics from freezing.

"Dextre is doing much better today, much warmer than the last time I was out there with him," said astronaut Garrett Reisman, who performed the first spacewalk on Thursday night.

"He's still all cut up into little pieces," Reisman said in a series of broadcast interviews early Saturday. "But when he's all put together, he looks a lot like a person. He's got two arms, a body, a head, and he is designed to do basically the same things that we do on a spacewalk."

Reisman said before the flight that Dextre was a little scary and monstrous-looking, and he likened it to Frankenstein coming alive.

Once fully assembled, Dextre will stand 12 feet and have a mass of 3,400 pounds. Its shoulder span is nearly 8 feet.

A third spacewalk, on Monday night, will be needed to hook up Dextre's tool holster. That ought to do it.

The Canadian-built Dextre _ which cost more than $200 million _ is designed to assist spacewalking astronauts. Its name, in fact, is short for dexterous. The hope is that the robot eventually will take over some of the more punishing chores, like lugging around big replacement parts.

To guard against a robotic mutiny, Mission Control jokingly told the astronauts in their wakeup mail Saturday that some new flight rules were being instituted.

No. 1, "Dextre may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm," Mission Control wrote. No. 2, "Dextre must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."

As for Dextre's delayed wakeup, Canadian Space Agency officials were reluctant to cast blame. The agency and its main contractor were responsible for designing the cable that failed to relay power to the robot, via its transport bed.

In all, five spacewalks are planned during Endeavour's nearly two-week visit to the space station. The shuttle arrived with Dextre and a new Japanese storage compartment late Wednesday. It also delivered Reisman as the space station's newest resident; he'll remain on board until June.